


The Colour of the Water

by Cirth



Series: Canary-Yellow Cape [3]
Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Nightwing (Comics)
Genre: Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Canon-Typical Violence, Character Study, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Past Rape/Non-con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-21
Updated: 2019-11-18
Packaged: 2020-12-27 16:47:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,022
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21122021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Cirth/pseuds/Cirth
Summary: “I am,” Bruce rumbles, “holding youbothresponsible.” And even though that is what he says, Dick hears,I am holdingyouresponsible, and his face burns.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Title from 'When Writing Fiction Hurts the People You Love' by Abigail DeWitt. Just...ignore Infinite Crisis. 
> 
> Can be read as pre-slash if you want. 
> 
> Thanks to Averia for the beta.

**The Colour of the Water**

Dick has never been good at waiting. “Lousy weather, huh?”

Jason grunts from where he is crouched on the catwalk. It’s close enough to the floor that they could hear a conversation below, but high enough for them to not be seen in the shadows.

“I nearly slipped and broke my ankle, and I’ve been doing this since I was eight.” The rain has stopped now, but it had been lashing down not an hour ago, turning Gotham’s clogged inner streets to rivers.

Jason finally turns to look at him. In the paltry moonlight, droplets of water glimmer on his jacket. “Something bothering you?” he says, in that offhand, borderline-annoyed manner of his that doesn’t fool Dick. He knows that, beneath the helmet, Jason’s face is impassive. Calculated. Sometimes, he thinks that Jason is able to cut to Dick’s core better than anyone else.

It is true that Dick has been off-centre for the past few days. It was why he’d jumped at the opportunity to work this case for Bruce.

He’d been not-watching the news from his couch last Tuesday evening, spooning bran flakes into his mouth and thinking about how to deal with a particularly difficult student in his gymnastics class. Next door, his neighbours were having a vocal (and routine) argument – something about Barney socks and the carpet.

Between one bite and the next, a banner had started scrolling at the bottom of the TV screen. At first, the words did not register and Dick grew confused. Then numbness settled in.

He sat there with his bowl in his hands, his mouth full of soggy bran flakes, unseeing, for minutes. Eventually, moving like his bones had turned to rust, he spat the food into a tissue, got up, walked to the kitchen, walked back, his ears ringing with the thin echo of a gunshot. He shut the window curtain because he hated the idea of anyone looking inside.

Tarantula will be released from prison next month.

Dick knows what he will do if he comes across her: leave.

He knows what he will want to do.

(When Tony Zucco had writhed on the ground, begging Dick to call an ambulance, Dick called him a liar and struck him with the staff he'd stolen from the Batcave.)

"_Hey_."

Dick slots back to the present.

Even with the helmet on, Jason looks like he wants to start _talking_, but the faint echo of footsteps interrupts them, and they snap to attention. They had not been sure that this meeting would take place, but now that it is, Dick is all ears.

Whispers of a new drug had crept onto the Bats’ radar a few weeks ago. Not quite as strong as heroin, but as addictive. It could ruin you without killing you for a long, long time.

Dick’s eyes dart as he listens closely, keeping still. They need to be careful with their movements; the abandoned warehouse they’re squatting in fell into disuse back in the 90s, and even shifting their weight could cause the metal to creak and give away their location.

Two, no, three people. Males, by the footfall.

“Got the goods?”

“All here.”

Shuffling, the low whine of a zipper.

That’s their cue. Dick nods to Jason, and they leap down, Dick with his escrima sticks and Jason with his fists – he uses his guns less often now in Gotham, and mostly for intimidation.

It is barely a fight, even with each of the thugs carrying a pistol or two each. Dick feels a twinge of guilt when it is over within a minute – a few solid punches, a couple of strategic kicks, and all but one of the men is collapsed to the ground. The gym bag with the goods lies abandoned near a wall. Dick’s limbs are electrified, fingers itching to curl into a fist and pummel into something.

(In that moment, he hates himself, just a little.)

Blinking away his unease, he gives the unconscious goons a brief once-over. Fit, bodyguard builds. Branded shoes, if well worn. Plain, unremarkable clothes to blend in, but good quality and clean. One of them has a gold tooth, now stained with blood. These guys work for a big buyer, possibly a drug lord.

The man who had been carrying the drugs – mid-thirties, receding hairline, the beginnings of a paunch sagging over his belt – has scrambled back against a pillar, trying and failing to not look terrified.

Jason isn’t helping the man’s case. The helmet is still on, but Dick knows Jason is baring his teeth. “So, Biff – can I call you Biff?” Jason drawls in a faux-casual tone, and carries on without waiting for a reply. “You’re selling to kids, aren’t you? Flowerfields High?”

Biff (Dick can’t keep calling him ‘the guy’ in his head), apparently unable to come up with a convincing lie, snarls and sputters, “Yeah, what about it?”

Jason pulls his gun from his holster in one smooth motion and points it between Biff’s eyes. The little weasel’s expression quickly changes, and he scrambles back, making a noise like a startled animal.

The sight of the gun gleaming darkly sobers Dick, though he knows Jason will not use it. Not to kill the guy, at any rate. He crouches down so he and Biff are at eye level. “Who are you working for?” he says.

“No one!” Biff blabbers, with the kind of blustering anger that stems from fear. “I run everythin’ around here!”

Jason sniffs disparagingly. “You don’t look smart enough to organize a drug ring. My bet? You’re just some underling the seller sent to stop himself from getting caught.”

Dick hates to agree, but there is a certain lack of sharpness in the man’s gaze that is found in the higher ups of Gotham’s criminal organisations. “What say we take you somewhere better suited for talking?” he says. He signs _Safehouse 24 _to Jason, who pauses, before nodding.

Dick is standing up and reaching for the man’s shirt collar when there is the ring of a gunshot, and he wonders, for a bizarre moment, if Jason really did pull the trigger. The next second the goon is crumpled on the ground, crimson pooling rapidly from his temple, eyes open and glassy, and it’s Maxine Michaels, Maxine Michaels who had put her hand on his shoulder and sold him out to Blockbuster, her blood sprayed across Dick’s jawnoselips.

Jason swears and turns around. His gaze pierces through a now shattered window, high up, likely the top of a building. “Sniper!” he barks. He grabs the gym bag, zips it, and swings it over his shoulders. Without another word to Dick, he shoots out a line and hauls himself up, through the window, in the direction of the disappeared figure.

Dick’s training kicks in, and he whips out his grapple gun and dashes after him. Perched at the window sill, he spots Jason heading north-east. Cursing, he looks down, hurriedly surveying the streets for information he could use later, and zeroes in on a parked sedan that had not been there when they had arrived. Zooming in with his lenses, he snaps a photo of the number plate.

Then he shoots out another line and sails up and up. His legs move on their own, sending him flying over rooftops and across ledges. He can barely make out their target, a dark, blurry figure, having no choice but to trust Jason to get them wherever they need to be.

Later – two minutes, or ten, Dick isn’t certain – they end up on the ground again, on a deserted road with half the street lights fused. His head is just starting to clear when Jason skids to a halt and looks sharply towards an alley up ahead on the left, knees bent and shoulders tense.

“Hood?” Dick says, dangerously close to frantic. He is seriously off his game tonight. “He’s getting away!” They have already lost sight of him, and panic bubbles in Dick’s chest.

Jason frowns. “I saw something,” he replies curtly, and Dick knows by his tone that whatever he saw was far from pleasant. “I’ll take this, you follow the sniper.”

“Wait – ”

Jason has already taken off in the direction of the alley. Dick curses, grits his teeth, and follows. Trust issues be damned, he cannot allow Jason to put a bullet in some fucker on his watch.

He turns into the alley just in time to see Jason slam a knee, hard, into a man’s gut, before delivering a blow that, going by the resounding _crack_, breaks his jaw.

On the ground, by a brick wall blackened with mould, there is a woman, near-catatonic in fear and shock. Her skirt is pulled down around her ankles. One of her sandals is slipping off her foot.

Her blouse is torn.

It is cold.

Wet.

The rooftop. Her. Her hands on his suit. Over his shoulders and chest. Lower. Rain, on his lips and in his hair and drowning out the world.

Bruce. He failed Bruce.

He’s a killer.

Her, his name on her lips. Lie back, that’s good, good boy. Justlikethatdon’tthink_ssh_.

“Why the hell are you just _standing_ there?”

There is an alley. Narrow. Pocked with puddles of sewage water. Strewn with garbage. Why is he in an alley? There’s a woman, half undressed, staring at him like he’s an alien, and...Hood. Hood with his hands fisted in the front of a man’s blood-speckled shirt and his head twisted towards Dick. The mouthless helmet appears to glare at him even with its blank white lenses.

“_Nightwing_,” Jason says sharply.

Dick’s senses trickle back to him, sluggish, a slowed pulse. His stomach roils. He cannot think of her. Not this minute. The mission. Back to it.

“Ma’am,” Dick makes himself say, his mouth fitting awkwardly around the words, “are you all right?”

The woman looks at him, apparently trying to discern if he’s another violent nutter, before nodding once. Gingerly, she pulls her skirt back up, and even in the dimness Dick knows her face is red with humiliation. She takes deep breaths, wraps her arms around herself.

Jason jostles the man, who whimpers. Dick is struck with a wave of anger shot through with irritation – why are criminals so _pathetic_? “Get off on raping women, huh?” Jason says, low and dangerous. “You think that’s fun?”

Dick’s fingers dig into his thighs, and tries, valiantly, to keep the bile from rising in his throat. Tries not to think of the rain.

The man breathes like a bellows, insensible with terror.

“You know what I think is fun?” Jason reaches for the gun at his holster, presses the barrel to the man’s temple. He’s not bluffing this time. “Blowing rapists’ brains out.”

The man makes a choked, desperate sound that does nothing for Dick’s opinion of him. And yet, “Hood,” he finds himself protesting, because this is the shape he has broken himself into over years and years, “we need to turn him in.”

“So he can walk?” Jason says, incredulous, turning to face him. “This piece of shit has done this before.”

Dick is sure of it. “We don’t know that.”

“Bet on it,” Jason growls, turning his attention back to the snivelling man. “And even if he hasn’t, anyone who _attempts_ rape is a rapist.”

“I agree,” Dick says, and he does, “but – ”

“But nothing,” Jason snarls. “He had it coming.”

“Hood – ”

The woman clutches at her head, squeezes her eyes shut. She is curling in on herself. “Just let me go,” she moans.

Dick realises, with a shock of guilt, that they have been so caught up in their argument about how to deal with the rapist they’d forgotten about the victim. No doubt their near-yelling had frightened her even further. He hates to bring it up, but he makes himself sound as unaggressive as possible: “Do you want to file a complaint to the police? We can accompany you.”

“_No_. Just _let me go home_.” She is nearing hysterics now, her voice taking on that warbled quality that precedes screaming, or crying, or both.

“Okay,” Dick says placatingly, palms up, “okay. Let me – ” The woman is already scrambling past him. In the half-light, he sees a bruise smeared on her jaw, a blotch of clotted blood beneath her nose. She trips and stumbles, but carries on, half-running.

Dick would, in any other circumstances, follow to make sure she got some safely, but he has Jason to deal with.

He turns back, ready to begin another plea to not put the bastard in the ground, but stops when he finds Jason tilting his head thoughtfully at the man. "I said I wouldn't kill in Gotham," Jason growls at length, "and I won't. But I will do this." Before Dick can so much as open his mouth, Jason moves like a snake, dizzy-quick, snapping the man's forearm, then his wrist.

The shriek the man emits makes Dick wince, and vaguely, he is disgusted with himself, that he would allow this – still he does not say anything. He's with Jason on this, even if he wishes he weren't.

Jason looks at the man, disdain rolling off him, before grabbing his shoulder and tossing him to the ground. "Listen up, scumbag," Jason says, as the man curls up, still squealing. "You're going to take a trip to the police station and turn yourself in." His hand rests on the back of his gun. "If I see you walking free, a broken arm will be the _least_ of your concerns."

The man sniffles and gives a frantic nod.

Jason scoffs, then turns to Dick. "Let's go. I don't wanna breathe the same air as him."

_You breathe filtered air anyway_, Dick thinks, a little wildly. He suddenly remembers the sniper.

Shit. They let him get away. _Dick_ let him get away. He should have gone after the sniper. He should have trusted Jason, but he was held back by his own caution.

The weight of it ploughs into him. Dick is still, barely breathing. His eyes are open, but he isn’t seeing anything.

Jason's attention is on him. “You okay?”

Dick stumbles to the main road, to a garbage can, fumbles at the lid with clumsy sausage fingers. It's stuck, and he flops down in a crouch and empties the contents of his stomach – which is mostly bile, since he’d skipped lunch. When he’s done he kneels there, gulping in shaking breaths and shivering.

“What the fuck, N? Are you sick?” Jason waits till Dick drags himself up and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. “Please tell me you didn’t jeopardise this mission via your colossal martyr complex.” Despite himself, he comes over to check on Dick and steady him by the elbow. Sweat slides down Dick’s temple. “_Hey_,” Jason says sharply, his voice an octave higher than it usually is. He has always been awkward in showing concern.

Dick blinks, comes back to himself. “Sorry,” he mutters, hoarse, breaking Jason’s hold. “For the record, this mission has been jeopardised either way.” He tilts his head back, closes his eyes. “We...need to give B an update.” Then he pauses. "No, actually, we should retrieve the bullet first."

Jason shakes his head. "Golden Boy's a bleeding mess today."

***

Dick expects Jason to hole himself up in one of his safehouses; it is his usual m.o. Instead, for reasons unclear, he shadows Dick to the Cave, scowling and standing next to Dick with his arms crossed over his chest. His right boot taps a staccato beat on the floor.

“You let him get away,” Bruce repeats, tone flat in a way that suggests he is holding onto his patience by the tips of his fingernails.

“There was an _attempted rape_,” Jason says, incredulous. His helmet is off, dark curls plastered over his skull, cheeks pink and splotchy. He's going to start balding early, like Bruce, if he keeps wearing the stupid thing. “I think a drug ring can wait.”

Bruce is unmoved. “It didn’t require both your attention.”

"It was my fault,” Dick blurts, unwilling to let Jason baselessly suffer the brunt of Bruce’s censure. “I followed Jason. He told me to go ahead.” He feels like he is twelve again, scrambling to save someone else from his own fuckups.

Bruce turns to Dick, who still, after all these years, struggles not to shrink under his heavy gaze. When Dick was a child – he can't remember the exact incident – Bruce had asked, hesitant (and perhaps, Dick thinks, nervous, but it was so long ago, he might be misremembering), _You really that scared of me?_ It was not a question Dick had ever expected from him. He replied, in that guileless, honest way children have, _Yeah. In a God-fearing kind of way._

He tries not to think too much about it.

“I am,” Bruce rumbles, “holding you _both_ responsible.” And even though that is what he says, Dick hears,_ I am holding _you_ responsible_, and his face burns. “Hand in the report tomorrow and continue the mission after that.” He makes his exit, disappearing up the stairs.

Jason's eyes slit to Dick. "I thought he'd be mad at me," he says, "but I could tell it was your throat he was going for, big bird."

Dick wants to curl up in bed with his earphones plugged in so he can shut out the world. His chest feels like he’s got heartburn. "I'll get started on that report."

Jason scrunches his nose. “Aren’t you at least gonna take a shower first?”

Dick is already eyeing the computer. “No.”

“Gross,” Jason puts in, and minces away, scratching his wayward, sweat-soaked hair.

Dick looks after him for a moment – it is still surreal to speak with Jason instead of fight him – and then heads over to the console, cracking his knuckles and pulling up a chair. He types up the report in minutes, not wanting to dwell on the events, and then settles into the real work.

The sniper wouldn't have led them to his employer's base, and odds are his employer is the buyer. The goons’ sartorial choices were a little too nice, so the buyer likely pays his men well (or at least provides them with fancy outfits), and could afford to hire a sniper.

Dick punches in the number plate of the sedan, runs the CCTV feeds for the usual places for drug manufacturing, as well as the unusual ones. Once he's done that, he tests the composition of the bullet, finds where its sole manufacturer is located.

By the time he's reasonably satisfied, the digital clock on the too-bright screen reads 10:34 am.

Sticking his knuckles into his watering eyes, he rolls back his chair. He misses the days when the only time he had to use a computer was when Batman himself was unavailable.

***

“Spill.”

Dick looks up from his Earl Grey, bleary. Unlike Jason, he isn’t fond of insipid leaf-water in the slightest, but Alfred had forbidden him to take more coffee. (He'd been living off it for the past couple of days.)

Jason misinterprets Dick's silence. He sits down on the other end of the couch, runs his finger over the rim of his own cup, eyes lowered. “Did you think I would kill him?” he asks gruffly. "Because I told B I wouldn't. Not in Gotham."

“What? No.” He’d not been sure of it, at any rate. He still feels guilty for being suspicious, covered in ignominious slime, but if it's between suspicion and a dead man, Dick prefers the former. “I kind of wanted to myself,” Dick mutters, rubbing his forefinger and thumb together, like a fly, fidgety. One bad feeling to another. Jason is the only one – aside from Tiger or Donna – he can admit that to. Tim and Damian do not need to know that their mentor – the actual _creator_ of Robin – is so unforgivably flawed.

_You’re seriously freaking me out._

Jason pauses. He’s changed into a spare set of clothes that Alfred keeps in his old room ‘just in case’. In a Jane Austen T-shirt and jeans, he looks like any other grad student, bags under his eyes and all. He even eats that kind of shitty fast food on the regular, but Dick can't judge him for that. “Let me guess – you feel guilty for having a perfectly reasonable reaction to a rapist.”

_What _was_ that?_

“It’s not reasonable to kill,” Dick finds himself murmuring.

Jason clicks his tongue – a habit picked up from Damian. “I’d debate that, but what I meant was that it’s normal to _want_ to kill a rapist, even if you don’t actually end up doing it. And you didn’t. So it’s settled.” He crosses his legs and leans back, raising his eyebrows at Dick in a mildly challenging look.

Dick huffs out a helpless, uneasy chuckle. This is not a line of reasoning he is comfortable with.

Jason brings his cup to his mouth. “Your life would be so much smoother if you didn’t kiss B’s ass all the time,” he says, with a touch of regret and something like resignation.

“Believe it or not, Jason, I don’t just blindly follow everything Bruce says,” Dick snips, annoyed.

Jason shoots him an unimpressed look. “I’ve heard villains call you Batman Lite. You’re a lot more like him than you say you are.”

“I could say the same for you.”

He's afraid, for a moment, that he has stepped on Jason's ever-sensitive toes, but Jason ignores him, tilting his head to one side and looking at the ceiling thoughtfully. “You _were_ under his care the longest out of all the Robinses. My run was a whopping two years.”

Dick hides his laugh with a cough, poorly, remembers Bruce’s smile when he said he’d be adopting Jason. Remembers swallowing the lump in his throat. “It was a good run.”

To his surprise, Jason lowers his gaze and says, “Maybe. At first.” For a moment, his eyes are far away. Then he grunts and scrubs at his nose, obviously uncomfortable at the turn of the conversation. “Wanna work on the case later?”

“I've already got a lead."

Jason's eyebrows climb into his curly fringe. "You didn't sleep?"

"I'm surprised _you_ didn't stay up, given your whole 'big scary Hood' shtick."

"Hey, I get my six hours as often as I can. I'm not like you, walking human disaster who can't adult."

"I’ll have you know I interrupted my work to have dinner last night."

"A graham cracker doesn't count as dinner."

"Two graham crackers. With milk." The pantry in the cave is sorely understocked.

Jason actually winces. The snob. "How are you not _blind_ with how badly you eat? I'm sure B and Alfie hammered the basics of nutrition into your skull before they ever allowed you out in your scaly green panties."

"It was a leotard and you know it. And I'm touched that you care." He is, despite his sarcastic tone. He doesn't usually have someone mothering him when he's too tired to take care of himself. It's...nice.

"Can I please," says Jason, looking pained, "get some proper food in you before you keel over and end up ruining the mission?"

Dick's stomach churns at the idea of eating. He keeps thinking of the rooftop, the rain. "Would it matter if I said no?"

"Fruit," Jason decides, grabbing his elbow and propelling him out of the cave, "and cheese. And baked chicken. Alfie said it's in the fridge. How are your joints not completely fucked up with your diet?"

"They are," Dick says dryly. It was fine till he was twenty. A decade on, his knees burn every time he squats or jumps or tumbles. His knuckles ache when he's just sitting there doing nothing. His back is a damn travesty.

"It's a miracle that you're alive," Jason mutters.

He lets Jason drag him to the kitchen, push him into a chair at the island, and set the food down. Dick sighs and scowls and rolls his eyes as he crams it into his mouth, and Jason watches like a hawk till Dick has finished every last crumb.

"There," Jason says, looking satisfied. "Don't you feel better with all those nutrients in you?"

Dick’s stomach hurts, feels like it’s stretched to bursting even though he ate a normal amount. "Much." He puts down his fork. A headache pounds behind his eyes. He should sleep. "I think I know who organised the drug deal," he says.

Jason gives a gasp of mock-surprise and claps his hands over his cheeks. "You mean Timmy didn't find out for you?"

"You think I need Tim to do my research for me?" Dick snorts, too tired to be offended. "Who do you think _trained_ the brat in detective work half the time? Bruce was off mangsting with the gargoyles – ” _Because you died_, he almost finishes, and then stops himself.

Jason raises his palms in droll surrender, but says, "Hey, don't shit on the gargoyles."

It's such a banal thing to say, but it feels intimate, like Jason is offering information that’s personal. Dick pauses. Lets the moment sink in. Lives in it. "The buyer's almost certainly Black Mask."

It wasn't like they hadn't suspected it, since Sionis is known to sporadically control the entirety of Gotham's drug trafficking, but they had been lacking in evidence. "As if Sionis hasn’t given us enough trouble recently,” Dick grouses. Criminals tend to recede into the shadows to lick their wounds and avoid attention, after getting their asses handed to them. Sionis has latched onto them like a fox with a rabbit, and suspicion nags at the back of Dick's head.

Jason makes a face. “What, you mean you and Bats busting his weapons trafficking thing six, seven months ago?”

“And stopping his brief stint in _ human _trafficking before that.” Dick doesn’t want to know what a sadistic bastard like Sionis would have done to the women – all undocumented immigrants – whom he didn't sell and kept for himself. He remembers their faces, sallow and haunted, when he kicked down the door to the cramped little attic in Gotham's seediest district.

He'd spent the next couple of days sporadically practicing breathing exercises and forcing himself to focus on other cases. After Flores, he's had...difficulty, distancing himself from crimes of assault. And he's tried – he's _ tried _ to be rational about it, but hasn't succeeded. He can't approach it with calmness any more than he can walk on water.

"Do I need to get my duffel bag?" Jason says.

The reminder comes as a shock: that Jason was, not too many years ago, a serial murderer. Dick had tucked the information away in a box of Jason’s sins at the back of his head, next to Dick's own. "No." He still doesn't understand how Jason managed to locate and behead eight people in two hours. Dick should be horrified, and he is, but he also finds that he is just...a tiny bit fascinated by it.

(You've got to have a few screws loose for this line of work. Either you're born like that, or you take a screwdriver to your brain.)

“My bazooka?” Jason says hopefully.

Dick can’t help it. He laughs, burying his face in his crossed arms on the island, shoulders shaking.

“Is that a yes?”

Dick straightens and wipes the tears at the corners of his eyes. “Shove it up your ass, Jason.”

***

TBC


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I headcanon that Haly's was a travelling French circus, which is why it was one of the languages Dick knew as a kid.
> 
> Many thanks to WithTheKeyIsKing for the beta!

Between the two of them, they make an educated guess about Sionis' current hideout and supply chain. It's not easy: men like Sionis keep things unpredictable so their patterns aren't obvious. They zero in on an innocuous-looking building three miles from Miller Docks – nice enough for Sionis' tastes, but not ostentatious enough for most people to notice.

The night before they plan to make their move, Dick infringes on Jason's solitary dinner at the kitchen table. Jason’s head snaps up and he goes still, like a gazelle listening for predators. "What are you doing?"

Dick settles into the chair opposite Jason. "Sitting with you," he says. Somewhere along the line, he'd started to enjoy spending time with him. (He likes to think they enjoy spending time with each _other_, but it's hard to tell, with Jason. They have rattled each other, in the past, and stumbled around what should have been an easy relationship.)

Jason gives him a narrow look. "Why?"

"Food tastes better when you're with family." He says it without thought, dreamlike. It was something his father always told him, almost as a chastisement, or a prayer. Though, 'family' to them also included a bunch of his parents' friends and a medley of children around Dick's age who grabbed at the food with their grubby little fingers.

The result was this: His mother tongues were French, Romani and English, but he'd curse in Yusuf the strongman’s Azeri and sing Shakuntala's Bengali lullabies. The children made fun of his name – not because it was Dick (though that was part of it) but because it was _Richard Grayson_ – so terribly English. Dick didn't see what he was expected to do about it – it was the name his mother had given him, so he rolled with it.

(That had been one of the hardest things to adjust to when he first came to the manor – sitting alone at a gargantuan table with plates and plates of foods whose names he couldn't pronounce. In those initial weeks, Bruce gave the bulk of his attention to the Zucco case, and left Dick with an apology and a bunch of toys he prodded at without enthusiasm. He'd felt like a Christmas puppy, flicked from a shelter and mainly around to look cute for the guests.

It wasn't far from what was expected. During his first gala, a guest with enough pearls around her neck to weigh as much as he did wanted him to "peform a trick" for her. She'd asked him to do a somersault, and when he'd refused, wondered if he could steal someone's watch without them noticing. Bruce intervened with an expression jammed in a rictus and propelled Dick, snarling and red-faced, away to the gardens. Dick had kicked his shin, and when that didn't earn him a reaction save a look of subdued heartbreak, kicked over a sculpture.)

Jason leans back in his chair, looks at the ceiling. "We never sat at the table together," he says.

Dick is thrown by the non sequitur. He rolls through the couple of years he knew Jason while he was Robin. He's sure they ate together at the manor at least once. (When Bruce wasn't around – he and Dick weren't on speaking terms, then. At least, Bruce wasn't. Alfred's levity had been a blessing.)

"My family," Jason clarifies.

Dick is silent, unwilling to interrupt. It is rare that Jason brings up anything about his life before Robin.

"At the manor," Jason's voice goes wobbly, and Dick doesn't miss the way he skips over Bruce and Alfred's names, "it became something enjoyable."

Dick blinks slowly. "Is this enjoyable?" he says, careful. He doesn't want to sound like this is about him; he wants to know if Jason feels welcome.

"It's...peaceful," Jason says, sounding unsurprised at his admission, like he has mulled over it before.

"Do you," Dick says, "want to talk about it? Your parents?"

Jason gives a strained, choked laugh. He shakes his head, seemingly at Dick's naivete. "No, Dickie," he says, his voice mocking and fond and thrumming with unspoken things.

They clear up the plates, in silence, and wash them so Alfred doesn’t have to.

***

Dick has always believed in listening to his gut. When he first donned the pixie boots, he thought Bruce would try to train it out of him, but the man was only encouraging, saying it was vital to cultivate a sharp intuition – which he defined as a set of information your brain processes faster than you can understand.

Now – on his knees with his wrists bound at his back, Jason next to him and reeling from a blow to the head from a club, guns pointed at both of them – he wishes he'd heeded that voice that told him something was wrong. Above them, the lights hang acid-bright, pricking Dick's eyes like needlepoints. Five men stand before them in a semi-circle, including Black Mask himself. That is never good news.

"You made us think you didn't want us to find you," Dick says, the pieces of the picture slotting together in his brain, "by hiring that sniper." They'd traced the bullet to a manufacturer who sold almost exclusively to Sionis – without it, and info on the man who was shot, the case would have been much harder. They'd fallen for a damn set-up; Sionis had been _waiting_ for them.

Sionis claps, in high spirits. The clear stone on his index finger glints. "Point for the bluebird. I'd have been satisfied with either you or Batman, but I have to say, I'd been hoping it would be you."

"Is the drug even real?" Jason says, sounding an inch away from blowing a gasket. They had wrangled a name from their research – Elias Fischer. Producer. Twenty-two years old. College drop-out. Father dead, mother a nurse in a public hospital. Older sister in jail for attempted murder.

"Oh, yes," says Sionis. "It's fairly lucrative to distribute. Had better, had worse. The boy only sells to us now, though. We offer him protection in exchange."

"You mean you threatened to kill him if he sold to anyone else," Dick puts in. He knows this song, knows it intimately. "You're not even paying him, are you? You're just effectively holding him hostage."

Sionis bends down at the waist, so Dick gets a faceful of his cologne – some concoction laced with ambergris that makes him feel ill. "Cost me a pretty penny, you did, when you threw a wrench in my business endeavour with those women nine months ago."

_Business endeavour_. "I should have put my escrima stick through your eye," Dick snarls.

Sionis laughs. He addresses his men without looking at them. “Careful, boys. The pretty one in black is dangerous.” He makes a vague, jerking motion with his gun in Dick's direction. “He’s the freak that killed Blockbuster.”

Roland Desmond is a semi-infamous case in the criminal underworld around Bludhaven and Gotham. That doesn't mean Dick doesn’t feel a shock of distress to hear it come up.

Jason is silent, still, as though weighing his beliefs about how far Dick can go and the easy, damning confidence in Sionis’ voice.

"I'd been thinking," Sionis continues with exaggerated regret, "how I could wring some fun out of you. You are no_to_riously hard to break. That psychotic clown told me so, back when I hired him to get rid your friend in red here. And then," he says with no small amount of glee, "I investigated a little, and found out about that little _thing_ with Tarantula."

One of Dick's molars is loose. He's been tongueing the edge for the past minute and a half. There's blood in his mouth. He should spit it out, at Sionis' feet. "What thing?" he challenges, hoping his voice isn’t coming out as shaky as he feels.

"She didn’t try to hide it, Nightwing," Sionis says, spreading his hands in mock sympathy. "In fact," he adds, tapping his chin, "I don't think she even _realised_ what she did."

"What the hell is he talking about?" Jason demands. Beneath the bluster, he sounds upset.

Sionis ignores him. “Getting her released from prison was a task and a half, but I have better resources than you'll ever know, and Blüdhaven's a rotten city."

Dick jabs his tongue, hard, where his tooth has broken off from his gums. It doesn't do anything to change what he's hearing. His wrists stop shifting against the rope tying them together.

"One of my men talked to her, during the process. What was she saying? Oh, yes – your suit didn’t have to be _that _tight. And I gotta say,” he adds, raking his eyes over Dick, “I agree. Don't most of you costumed clowns have more padding?"

Sniggers. Cloth rustling. Shoes scuffing.

Dick bites his cheek. More blood fills his mouth.

There are reasons he does not change the Nightwing suit:

i. It is an aerialist's outfit.

ii. It is a variant of John Grayson's costume.

The first should be obvious. The second, Dick tells no one. Not when people stare. Not when people laugh. Not when people curl their lips and say, _What's wrong with you, you sound like you were born in a circus tent._

Sionis turns to Jason. "Hood off."

"And I would do that why?" asks Jason, incredulous.

Sionis flicks his hand, and something cold and heavy knocks against the back of Dick's cranium. It is not an empty threat.

"All right, okay, _Jesus_," Jason says, tripping over his words, as if he really is scared. "I'm doing it now, don't shoot him." He presses his fingers to the hidden commands in his gloves, tapping out a code, and there is a _snick_. After Jason nods, one of the men steps forward cautiously and works off the helmet. There is palpable relief in the room when nothing explodes.

Jason's face is blotchy, and there is a lump the size of an egg on the side of his head. Dick is struck with anxiety: Sionis doesn't exactly share a charmed history with the Red Hood, and isn't known for capturing people without tormenting them. Dick wishes, viciously, that he'd come alone, that Jason didn't have to suffer at the hands of another lunatic.

Sionis sidles close to Dick again, grasps his chin his hand. It's the way Bruce does it, firm but gentle, fingers spread out. Dick's head swims. “When she's out,” Sionis says, in a velvet voice that is almost loving, “I’ll let her have her way with you again. How’s that sound?”

There is static in Dick's ears. His body is numb. The despair in his chest steals his breath.

Jason is saying something. “ – sick, disgusting _shitstain_ – ”

"And when she's done," Sionis continues, leaning down, so close his hot breath fans across Dick's face, "I'll take great pleasure in working a knife through your – "

A cell phone rings, shrill. The light glows through Sionis' trouser pocket. Had Dick been an onlooker, he might have laughed; it is so ridiculous, Sionis' sadistic little fantasy cut off by a generic, overly cheerful ringtone.

Sionis whips out the device with a sharp, angry movement. "This is not a good time." There is buzzing through the speaker. "Whaddya mean _not up to industry standards_? Of course it's 75% potassium nitrate, what the fuck else – " He cuts himself off, hissing, and glares at the room at large. "I need to head to the docks," he snaps at one of the underlings, who looks like he's about to piss his pants. "Lock them up. In _separate_ rooms. If they're not drugged to the gills by the time I get back, I'll rip out your fingernails myself."

With that he stumps out of the room, arguing into his phone.

Fingers sink into Dick's hair, haul him up. One of the men whispers, right in his ear, his breath reeking of cigarette smoke: I’d tell you to start praying, but it won’t help you.

And Dick closes his eyes.

***

Dick is not religious, but he believes in God. He's not sure which one, or if there is a which one, but he does. It has always been a part of him. He doesn't talk about it.

When Bruce took him to the church three miles away from manor, in those early years, Dick would watch the pastor, silent and awed. When the morning prayers, honey-rich, waft from the mosque near his apartment, he sits at his window with his coffee, listening. When his landlady, Abha, gave him a pocked-sized copy of the Bhagavad Gita, he kept it on his bedside table. The pages are worn now.

At funerals – whether he is clad in black or white – he offers blessings, quietly, in Romani, after most people have left. The few remaining, if they'd been listening, are surprised. It is a standard exchange:

_What did you say?_

_I now leave you to God._

He sifts through the prayers he knows, now, in his head. Not as a plea, but as a comfort, as a thing he does when he is unhurried. It is an odd feeling; he does not often pray during his vigilante work. It seems disingenuous, like he is sullying the verses.

Nonetheless it does what Dick wants: he prays like he is chalking his hands before performing the quadruple flip.

He meets Jason's eyes. Trusts Jason to understand the plan: They've got one shot at this. They do this wrong, and their brains will be painted across the walls.

Jason blinks. His jaw tenses, but a steely glint appears in his eye.

Yes, then.

Two of the men close in on Dick, and he is pulled away, out the door. He lets his head loll, puts on a show of being beaten down and exhausted. The hand in his hair tightens, with some glee, as though its owner takes pleasure in watching Dick sway.

He memorises the route. Along the way, he dislocates his thumb and loosens the ropes, enough that he could slip out of them but not enough for the others to notice; these people are pathetic at tying knots. Forty-two seconds later, they halt in front of a door with peeling, puke-green paint. The man not holding him holsters his gun to fish for the keys in his jacket.

Dick won't get any better chances. He moves mongoose-quick, twisting out of his captor's grasp and delivering a roundhouse kick to his solar plexus, hard enough to K.O. him.

The other man is snarling, fumbling for his gun. Dick doesn't waste time wriggling out of his bonds; he slams a kick into his liver and sends him off to dreamland with another to his head.

"If you wanted to take us out," he tells the unconscious men, finally pulling off the ropes and sticking his thumb back in its socket, ignoring the pain, "you could've at least done us the honour of not being idiots." He pauses. His escrima sticks and utility belt had been taken away; he is weaponless.

Cursing, he bends down to tie up the men (properly), before stripping them of their guns. He removes the bullets from one, but not the other. It is only a little frightening, mainly thanks to the adrenalin and tension from the night's events. He has used guns before. Not with joy, but he has.

Jason is not dying today.

Dick runs, retracing his steps till he gets back to the room where they'd been held. It's empty, and he fights down a flare of panic, dashing in the opposite direction of which he'd been taken. The sounds of a struggle waft to his ears, shouting and gunshots and what is probably a body slamming into a wall, and he tails them until he finds what he is seeking in a dingy, narrow corridor.

Jason has managed to incapacitate one of his captors and rid himself of his own ropes, but is struggling with the other goon. His helmet lies abandoned to the side. He is visibly feeling the effects of his concussion, his movements sloppy. His leg is freshly injured, bleeding all over the floor, and the man manages to get him in a headlock and shove his pistol against his head.

"Let him go," Dick states, raising his own gun, his finger steady over the trigger.

The man hauls Jason up, using him as a shield. "Sure that's a good idea?" One of his central incisors is missing, and Dick wants to stick his fist in his mouth and dislodge the other one.

Jason glances up at Dick, the beginnings of a contusion blooming on his left cheekbone. His nose is a bloody mess. And then: “Nightwing,” he rasps, “don’t kill him.”

Dick narrows his eyes.

“You moron, you can’t handle this,” Jason manages, an edge of panic to his voice. “Don’t be a damn fool.”

The goon laughs, a grating sound, broken glass. "Do it, pretty boy," he says. "I want him to see what happened after you broke your precious Bat-rule."

"_N_!"

Dick's shifts the gun and his finger presses down. The bullet tears through the man's elbow, and he howls and releases Jason, who staggers forward, stunned and wild-eyed. But he recovers quickly, and turns to deliver an economical, precise blow to the back of the goon's neck with his hand. He drops like a sack of shit to the ground.

There is a silence, during which both Dick and Jason hold their breaths, as though waiting for him to spring up again.

“That was lucky,” Jason rasps, looking a little shaken. “That was very, _very_ lucky.” He bends down, a little clumsily with his bad leg, gathers the rope, and uses it to tie the man up. As he stands, he kicks the goon's side, as if prodding a beast to check if it is dead. “Blackgate for this scum, and the rest of them.” Weaving a little – his injuries must be worse than he's letting on – he retrieves his helmet, clutching it like a child with an old stuffed toy.

There is a pall of calm settled over Dick. "Did you think I would kill him?" he says.

Jason's expression is cautious and blank.

The adrenaline recedes like a tide. Dick collapses to his knees, breathing hard. His hands cover his face. There is rain on his skin. His lips move. "Jason," he moans. "Jason, I'm so sorry. I nearly got you killed." Cold and wet, cold and wet. Stone scraping against his back.

Jason's deep, smooth voice is gentle, even if it sounds like they are underwater. It anchors Dick to the present. "N, hey." His hands cup Dick's cheeks; not to make him look, just to hold him there. "If you hadn't done that, I'd be mincemeat."

A strange, choked sound tears from Dick's throat. His arms loop around Jason's neck and he finds himself surging into him, half on his lap, too big. Jason stiffens, but doesn't push him off, even returns the embrace. Dick lets Jason's heat seep into his bones; it has been a long time since anyone held him. They both reek of sweat and blood and all the filth of the fight, but Dick doesn't want to let go.

Jason waits till Dick's heart slows down, waits till his breathing becomes level. "All right," he says then. "Up you get."

Dick tries to force himself to move, but his limbs have turned to lead. He panics, his breath hitching again. Jason doesn't say anything. He reaches out, lifts Dick by the underarms, shockingly strong and sure for his state, and manoeuvres an arm around his neck for support. "Okay?" he says.

Dick nods. The corridor swims in and out of focus.

"Then let's get going."

***

After they alert the GCPD, Jason doesn’t take Dick back to the manor. They hobble along, supporting each other's weight, till they get to Jason's bike parked a mile off. This while avoiding the main roads. They must make a damn sight. At one point they turn into an alley only to find a bunch of guys huddled around the exit of what is presumably a bar. The men stare, but do not ask any questions; one of them reaches out for a fist bump, which Jason returns smoothly.

They arrive at a safehouse – not one of the few they share as Bats, but Jason’s own – and Dick is deposited on a sofa that might once have been beige. Through its haze, Dick’s brain registers that the place is neat, almost quaint, the floor spotless, a teapot with a cup next to it on a table. "I guessed you didn't want to see the big man right now," Jason says.

Dick shakes his head, nauseous at the thought.

Jason shucks off his gloves and places a hand on Dick’s forehead, as though checking for a fever, or perhaps just as a gesture of comfort. He is favouring one leg, grimacing, and Dick slurs, "Your wounds."

"I'll deal, just shut up and rest." Jason trails off, his jaw working. “Did you,” he says, tight and hesitant, “kill Blockbuster?”

Dick looks away. “I was tired,” is what his mouth decides to say, which doesn’t even begin to cover what he actually was and the dissonance is enough to make him want to _scream_.

Jason seems to get it anyway. He chews his lip. “And did I understand Sionis right? What he said about Tarantula?”

The tears are unexpected. Dick is as surprised by them as Jason, who looks like Dick just whipped out a batarang with a mind to stick it in Jason's face. “Please,” he finds himself burbling, his shoulders shaking, and it’s pathetic, but he can’t stop it. “Please. I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to talk. Please. I’m – "

“Woah, hey,” Jason says, placating, palms up. “You don’t have to say anything.” He looks around, appearing to search for something, while Dick stuffs a thick wad of the blanket in his mouth to muffle the sounds he is making. Jason disappears somewhere. Dick hates that, so he squeezes his eyes shut and rocks himself. It helps only a little.

A couple of minutes later there is a hand at his shoulder, and he looks up to find Jason offering him a plastic cup of water. There is a bandage secured around his thigh, where he'd been bleeding. “You’re dehydrated,” Jason says.

Dick takes it and rests it against his lips, but does not drink. He has stopped crying now. His cheeks are crusted with salt.

“Right. Okay, then,” says Jason, seeming at a loss. He pries the cup from Dick’s fingers and puts it on the table. “I’m gonna go check on Fischer, see where he is. I'll bring him here if I find him.”

Dick blanches. The kid has a target painted on his back now; Sionis won't take kindly to this night's events. "I'm coming with you," Dick says, starting to heave himself up.

Jason pushes him back down with concerning ease. "You just had a complete mental breakdown to the point that you could barely walk. You are staying here and not getting in my way."

Dick scowls at him. "I can – "

"You can help yourself to a nutrition bar and take a damn nap," Jason interrupts, retrieving a pair of fresh guns from a safe and swiftly making his exit.

Dick lies down, but does not get any sleep, stiff with anxiety. He finds himself worrying about Jason, even though Jason is one of the shrewdest fighters he knows and it takes more than an apoplectic crime lord to one-up him. Dick replays the worst-case scenarios in his head, again and again; it is an exercise in futility.

Shit, how are they going to explain all this to Bruce? How many details will they leave out in their report? Can they even do that, when it is so tangled in the mess Dick created with Blockbuster?

Five hours later Jason crawls in through the window, a slump to his shoulders, and slides to the floor, his back to the wall. Even though there is no sign of Fischer, Dick is, shamefully, flooded with heady relief. Losing Jason a second time would have come like slipping a knife between broken ribs.

Jason pulls off his helmet, movements heavy, syrup-slow. "They shot him," he says, in a hollow voice. "He wasn't at home. I searched every probable place. Found his body in a tank on the roof of a motel." He scrubs a hand over his face, lets out a sigh that is all weariness, fury, guilt. "He was just a stupid kid."

Neither of them have words. Jason stays in the same position, head bent. He does not say anything, does not look up when Dick stands, folds the blanket, and leaves.

***

The nightmares are expected, but that doesn't make them easy to deal with. Sometimes Sionis takes a crowbar to Jason, battering him with zeal till his body is an unrecognisable mess, and Dick looks on, unable to cry out or help or move. Sometimes he lets Tarantula and his men take turns raping Dick. Sometimes they save Fischer. Those are the worst, because he wakes up, with wild hope, and then remembers they didn't.

It gets so bad he sleeps as little as possible to avoid the dreams, and it is only when he falls off the parallel bars and nearly breaks his neck at the gym that he admits, grudgingly, that he can't keep doing that.

And then there's Bruce.

It takes four missed calls and sixteen unread text messages from him before Dick is forced to reckon with whatever Bruce wants hammer into his skull. Tim breaks into his apartment as Dick is downing a protein shake for dinner and, with a sour expression, says, "B wants you on another case," like he is trying very hard to stay out of it. He'd just returned from a mission in Almaty involving the LoS and seems harried and peeved.

It is an excuse to lure Dick back to the manor; Bruce does not ask for his help twice in such quick succession. Dick tries to gather the annoyance and lassitude inside him to say no. It will be better for his mental peace.

But Dick has always had trouble refusing a job. His earliest memories were of work that scraped his hands raw. If he wasn't training, he was washing and feeding Zitka or studying – play happened after that, if at all. He was used to being constantly occupied. And Bruce is only going to get angrier and more frustrated – not that his face will show it – if Dick doesn't show up and deny everything Bruce throws at him.

So he agrees.

This is going to be so pleasant.

Before he goes to the manor, he tracks down Jason, finding him on Gotham Cathedral, lurking beside a gargoyle. Dick parks his ass next to him, watching the sunset, distorted by heat and pollution. He doesn't know if Jason wants to shove him off the edge for allowing a kid to die because he went and crumbled under Sionis' mind games. Nevertheless, he stays. He's been pushed off buildings before, and he's still alive.

Jason's helmet is off and a cigarette dangles from his mouth. His fingers twitch, like he cannot contain whatever he is feeling inside his skin. At length he plucks out the cig and crushes it against the weathered limestone. The light smooths the tired lines from his face, wipes away the scars, lending him an oddly nondescript look. "You'd only have to say the word," he murmurs, like he knows Dick won't. Like he is expressing regret, or perhaps sorrow – not making an offer.

Dick is surprised Jason has a drop of sympathy for him; after that catastrophe of a mission, Dick isn't sure he deserves any. He wraps his arms around his knees. If Jason knows the answer, there is no need for Dick to utter it.

"You ready to talk about it?"

“No."

“Okay." He shifts. "Have you told B?”

“No.”

Jason looks at him. "You haven't told anyone, have you?"

"I hate thinking about it," Dick blurts, without meaning to. "I hate knowing it happened. I can only deal by distracting myself." He stops, embarrassed at his admission, and sucks his lower lip.

"Fuck," says Jason, with feeling, flicking the cigarette off the edge. He doesn't say, _I'm sorry_, but that's only because he thinks it's inadequate – Jason has never favoured apologies over actions.

Something about how understanding Jason is being makes Dick feel guilty and small, and he finds himself saying, “I should have been a better brother.”

Jason blinks at him, scratching at his stubble. “'Better brother', what? All I can remember is that you helped me with my cases and gave me your number in case I wanted to talk.”

“Maybe I was living a lot in my head at the time.”

There is something about the Robin mantle that nobody understands: Richard John Grayson created it, and it is only Richard John Grayson's to give.

He remembers jealousy. Anger, that Bruce would fire him and, only months later, bestow Robin upon another child without even informing Dick, let alone taking his permission. It felt like betrayal.

It still does, sometimes.

"I was kinda intimidated by you," Jason mutters, sounding embarrassed. "S'why I didn't really approach you."

Dick could lie_._ Could act like there was nothing to be intimidated by. But there was. There is. Before Dick, there was no prototype of Batman's kid partner. Dick created that. Perhaps it is hubristic to acknowledge this; Dick doesn't know. He didn't go about setting any standards, because Robin wasn't supposed to be a legacy. It was supposed to die with him.

But if there had to be a successor, Jason was a gifted one. Dick only wishes he'd been the one to pass on the torch; it might have ended differently, if he had. For all that only Bruce could ever be Batman, he doesn't know a damn thing about being Robin.

He thinks about telling Jason, but then decides against it; it would be patronising.

Instead, Dick pulls out a slip of folded pink paper from his utility belt, thrusts it at Jason. He'd scribbled on a sticky note, torn it up and admonished himself for being silly, then written on another one thirty seconds later. This is the one in his hand.

"What's this?"

“My number,” Dick says. “You never used it the last time I gave it to you.” He shrugs, droll and a little awkward. “Open invitation.”

Jason takes it gingerly and, without opening it, tucks it into his trouser pocket. It is unlikely Jason will come to him for help, or a chat, or anything. Dick can only hope. He opens his mouth to say something, to fill the silence, but his comm beeps, making him start. Dick answers, his gaze not shifting from Jason's half-bemused, half-exasperated face.

"I need you here," Bruce's voice rumbles through, a freight train rolling into a station.

"Ten minutes," says Dick, and cuts the line.

Jason is grimacing. "Send me a picture of the Cave once you two are through. I've always wanted to trash it."

"You won't be disappointed," says Dick with a snort. He hopes Bruce is just going to hand him a pen drive and tell him to get on with the job, but it's a fool's hope even in his head. More likely he'll receive a lecture, which he'll brush off, and then Bruce will say something that will hurt like a blow to the kidney and Dick will punch him.

"You live in a madhouse," Jason mutters, picking up his helmet and shoving it back on.

"I live in my own apartment."

"The manor's still your home."

The modulator makes it difficult to be certain, but Dick doesn't think he's imagining the faint bitterness laced through Jason's voice. Dick cannot say, _It's yours too_, because it's not the same. He will not insult Jason by pretending it is.

They stand up. Jason fumbles for his grapple gun and curses softly when it nearly slips from his hand, and Dick suppresses a smile but not the rush of fondness. "I'm off, then," says Jason. He nods to Dick. It almost feels like friendship.

And then Jason's gone, slipping into Gotham's deep bowels.

The sky is beginning to darken into the colour of a bruise. Dick stands there for a time, looking at the brick corner around which Jason disappeared. "See you around," he says.

-end-

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 💫 lilaclotuses.tumblr.com 💖


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